The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the countryside well told me, was “not good.”  The girls had weakened constitutions as the result of their factory life and when they married had fewer than the normal number of children.  The general result of factory life was degeneration.  The girls “corrupted their villages.”

The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept on the factory premises except when they could allege urgent business in town.  But they were allowed out on the three nights of the Bon festival.  It was rare that priests visited the factories and there were no shrines there.  The girls had sometimes “lessons” given them and occasionally story-tellers or gramophone owners amused them.  The food supplied by some factories was not at all adequate and the girls had to spend their money at the factory tuck-shops.  “Most proprietors,” I was told, “endeavour to make part of their staff permanent by acting as middlemen to arrange marriages between female and male workers.”  The infants of married workers were “looked after by the youngest apprentices.”

In another place I saw over a factory which employed about 160 girls, who were worked from 5:30 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. with twenty minutes for each meal.  If a girl “broke her contract” it was the custom to send her name to other factories so that she could not get work again.  The foremen at this establishment seemed decent men.

One who had no financial interest in the silk industry but knew the district in which this second factory stood said that “many girls” came home in trouble.  The peasants did not like “the spoiling of their daughters,” but were “captured in their poverty by the idea of the money to be gained.”  Undoubtedly the factory life was pictured in glowing colours by the kemban.

In a third factory there were more than 200 girls and only 15 men.  The proprietor and manager seemed good fellows.  I was assured that it was forbidden for men workers to enter the women’s quarters, but on entering the dormitory I came on a man and woman scuffling.  The girls of this factory and in others had running below their feet an iron pipe which was filled with steam in cold weather.  On some days in July, the month in which I visited this factory, I noticed from the temperature record sheet that the heat had reached 94 degrees in the steamy spinning bays, where, unless the weather be damp, it was impossible, because of spinning conditions, to admit fresh air.  I saw a complaint box for the workers.  As in other factories, there was a certain provision of boiled water and ample bathing accommodation.  Hot baths were taken every night in summer and every other night in winter.  Here, as elsewhere, though many of the girls were pale and anaemic, all were clean in their persons, which is more than can be said of all Western factory hands.  Work began at 4 a.m. and went on until 7 p.m.  From 10 to 15 minutes were allowed for meals.  The winter hours were from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.